Proposals Could End 3rd Year at Law Schools // Instead, Students Would Work For Both Cash and Credit

WASHINGTON - Feb. 11, 2014 - PRLog -- The third year of law school, at least as we now know it, may soon end because of two proposals now before the body which regulates law schools.  Together they would permit law schools to outsource the entire third year, with students learning by working for pay at law firms and under practicing attorneys.

This would be nothing short of revolutionary, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who reminds us of the old saying about law school: "In the first year they scare you to death, in the second year they work you to death, and in the third year they bore you to death."

For too many years, law students have learned largely by lecture, discussion, and practice in make believe courtrooms, although one can hardly imagine graduating doctors, journalists, or any other profession with virtually no practical skills training, he argues.

Another proposal pending before the American Bar Association would finally require law schools to provide a bare minimum of  “experiential learning” for graduation.  Banzhaf was one of the first to introduce such training in law school by creating a course in which students must actually bring a legal action for a grade.

His law students, whom the media have dubbed "Banzhaf Bandits," started the modern nonsmokers' rights movement, improved everything from school bus safety to birth control pills, helped reduce gender-based pricing discrimination, and were successful in using law as a weapon against many other social problems from obesity to environmental harm.

A key ABA committee has voted to eliminate a current prohibition on law students getting paid for legal internships and externships.  This, coupled with another proposal to allow a full semester's work to be done via "distance learning," could virtually eliminate the third year at law schools across the country.

According to law professor Paul Campos, it would permit law schools to "eventually outsource the entire third year of law school to employers, thus essentially eliminating it as an academic matter."  "For law schools, such an arrangement allows one third of the curriculum to be offloaded," he said.

Campos suggests that all this could happen "with no loss of revenue" to the law schools, since the students arguably would continue to pay the same tuition.  But Banzhaf suggests that law students are likely to rebel, and demand that they not be charged full tuition - which can exceed $60,000 a year - for the privilege of watching teaching videos (perhaps from professors at other law schools), and working at a law firm with little or no supervision from the faculty at their own law school.

If so, this would be a further blow to law schools which, as a result of rapidly declining applications for admission, are mostly running deficits, with many also lowering admission standards and/or laying off law faculty.  But, notes Banzhaf, if this forces many law schools to close, it could be a good thing.  Law schools are currently graduating far more law students each year than there are jobs for them to fill.

Also, he notes jokingly, at the rate we are now graduating law students, by 2050 there will be more lawyers than people, and that's not good for the country.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
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